This paper studies equilibria of second price auctions in independent private value envi- ronments with different participation costs. Two types of equilibria are identified: monotonic equilibria in which a bidder with a lower participation cost results in a lower cutoff for sub- mitting a bid,...

In an auction with a buy price, a seller offers bidders the opportunity to forgo competing in an auction by transacting immediately at a pre-specified fixed price. If a seller has aspirations in the form of a reference price that depends upon the auction's reserve price and buy price, she does...

In this paper we analyze incentives for a potential entrant to get into an oligopolistic Cournot-like market by taking over one of the incumbents and we derive the conditions under which the hostile merger is possible and profitable. The key-feature is that the target of the takeover is...

We consider a second price auction between bidders with independently and identically distributed valuations, where a losing bidder suffers a negative direct externality. Considering ex-ante commitments to form bidding rings we study the question of core stability of the grand coalition, namely:...

Maskin and Riley (2003) and Lebrun (2006) prove that the Bayes-Nash equilibrium of �rst-price auctions is unique. This uniqueness requires the assumption that a buyer never bids above his value. We demonstrate that, in asymmetric �rst-price auctions (with or without a minimum bid), the...

Several new auction formats are spreading over the Internet. They have usually the aim of raising revenues by increasing the number of participant, who will pay a participation fee, rather than selling the object at the highest possible price. The aim of this paper is to study a format of...

The paper compares different auction formats for sale of a single patented innovation for budget constrained bidders. This unit decreases the marginal cost of production in the aftermarket for its owner by an amount which depends on the money invested on the development of this technology. As...

We examine the relative performances of reverse auctions and request for quotes in a simple commodity environment. Enterprises embarking on a reverse auction initiative often start with their commodity purchases. We conduct laboratory experiments and find that this is a poor starting point. Both...

I introduce a property of player's valuations that ensures the existence of an ex post efficient equilibrium in asymmetric English auctions. The use of this property has the advantage of yielding an ex post efficient equilibrium without assuming differentiability of valuations or that signals...

Despite the popularity of auction theoretical thinking, it appears that no one has presented an elementary equilibrium analysis of the complete information first-price sealed-bid auction mechanism when the bidding space has a finite grid. This paper aims to remedy that omission. We show that...